Yep, I think theLaw of Equal and Opposite Advice applies here.
One piece of advice which is pretty robust is — You should be about to explain your project to any other MATS mentee/mentor in about 3 minutes, along with the background context, motivation, theory of impact, success criteria, etc. If the inferential distance from the average MATS mentee/mentor exceed 3 minutes, then your project is probably either too vague or too esoteric.
(I say this as someone who should have followed this advice more strictly.)
I’d guess this varies by field? I think this would be bad advice in mech interp—there’s a lot of concepts and existing mech interp theory that you need to understand a bunch of good projects, and people new to the field are often bad at explaining these (and, importantly, I think I have decent judgement about whether a project is any good). But I’d guess this is decent advice in some areas of alignment.
Yep, I think the Law of Equal and Opposite Advice applies here.
One piece of advice which is pretty robust is — You should be about to explain your project to any other MATS mentee/mentor in about 3 minutes, along with the background context, motivation, theory of impact, success criteria, etc. If the inferential distance from the average MATS mentee/mentor exceed 3 minutes, then your project is probably either too vague or too esoteric.
(I say this as someone who should have followed this advice more strictly.)
I’d guess this varies by field? I think this would be bad advice in mech interp—there’s a lot of concepts and existing mech interp theory that you need to understand a bunch of good projects, and people new to the field are often bad at explaining these (and, importantly, I think I have decent judgement about whether a project is any good). But I’d guess this is decent advice in some areas of alignment.